"How beautiful it is to get up and go out and do something. We are here on earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you different." Kurt VonnegutTime takes its crazy toll. Sonic Youth, the Diamond Sea

Friday, February 26, 2010

The phrase Only connect was made famous by Forster in Howard's End (not that I've actually read it, but see What the Bee Knows by P. L. Travers for a wonderful discussion of it. Forster's sense of it, evidently, was cosmic, that we connect not only to each other but also our history as a species, our myths, across time and generations. My main interest in using social networks is like what

Kippe and Kopper said, “Recognize that what sustains most information technologies is people’s desire to connect with one another.”

Twitter has become my main source of new information, with Bloglines and email not far behind. I joined Twitter just to lurk and soon found hundreds of other users with similar interests, both professional and personal. One can manage the Twitter stream with Twitter lists (links to Twitter users sharing common information and support.)

What is a social network? Wikipedia discusses this with emphasis on physical and biological relationships such as family and kinship. Here, I consider the context of our online research environment and cyberinfrastructure such that, Social media are web tools that facilitate information exchange and social interactions.

At the same time as different companies with different clients contend for hegemony, the ones I use (Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Bloglines, Blogger, Diigo) all serve different purpose and i interact with different groups on each for different purposes. Munger, noting that not one channel dominates and reflecting on a virtual science conference from 2009, remarks: "the intersection between the online and the real, in science and in all other spheres of life, is likely to get even murkier in the future."

Is our conversation limited to 140 characters? While announcing the 140 character science paper competition, Richard Grant looks sceptically at social media's (such as Twitter's) use for disseminating scientific results.

Adoption of SM tools by libraries has gained some interest; for example, A survey of library users concludes that some 50% use social networks, photo editing tools and online video provided by their local library. Meanwhile our young digital natives know what they want from their library.

This is a huge topic about how to facilitate interactions between people, using these tools, businesses talking with their customers, sharing info rather than hoardnig it. Many are concerned about privacy and safety (and $.) Gordhamer suggests some good guidelines, such as brevity, not putting too much investment into getting an immediate response and using your counterpart's preferred communication channel. He emphasizes connecting with others for a shared, mutual interest. Tamsen also shares some tips for successful social media participation.

Friday, February 12, 2010

The Global Knowledge Exchange Network relaunched this week. From the efforts of Mary Lee Kennedy and Gosia Stergios of Baker Library, Harvard Business School, in collaboration with colleagues from Copenhagen, this online community furthers the discussion of scholarly communication issues, disruptive technology and new paradigms in information. Knols serve as bodies of knowledge and jumping off points for conversation. Speakers and webcasts to follow. It is an openly accessible community. Congratulations to Mary Lee and Gosia!

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Eugen Kullmann was well known at Kenyon by many students I was friendly with when I arrived at Kenyon College in the Fall of 1983. His archives from his teaching career are housed online at Middlebury. Prof. William McCulloh, in his remarks at Kullmann's memorial in 2003, and many (except the students and colleagues of his) probably felt the same way. (I wasn't at the symposium in 2003, a memorial. Haven't been back to Kenyon since I graduated and many faculty I studied with are there, including a lady Kullmann called "my successor", Miriam Dean-Otting, a highly gifted-teacher for whom I wrote two excellent papers and one lousy one in our Senior Seminar.

I heard stories before I met Prof. Kullmann from older students that he knew classical Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, taught courses on the Psalms, the Hebrew Bible and the Holocaust. Students ured me to go see him and study with him, but I was reluctant. I remember Bill Marchl, a friend who was a year ahead of me, showing off a wonderful paper about Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach, which the professor had regarded highly. I remember friends telling me of a conversation in class he had with a student, comparing the scriptures to a big department store, from which you could take some of what was useful and leave the rest. Another told me of Kullmann's wrath as rock music echoed throughout the campus in the spring. I heard of Prof K saying, "you young people, with your rock and roll and your rolling rock, trying to kill time. But sooner or later time is going to kill you."

In the spring of 1985 I met him, first when Bill Marchl introduced me to him at his talk on Maimonides Guide to the Perplexed. I knew nothing about it when I heard him speak, still don't, but I remember the doctor said before he began "A minute wasted is lost for all eternity." when my good friend Andrew Black took me to visit him at his house on the Kokosing River in Gambier, Ohio. I was on the fence about joining the department at that time. Kullman had retired in the spring of 1984, receiving an honorary degree. Andrew and I were buds and he told me much about the old gentleman, that he liked Big Bear supermarkets. When I met the man, he seemed old world, a European classical scholar. His house was mystical, with fading light, dust, cats, clocks and many books. Andrew knew him well. I made up that I was a religion major and couldn't communicate well with the Professor, but he liked that I knew about Bergman's The Seventh Seal. He was kind and asked me to come back, but in the Fall of 1985 I dropped out to waste time and work menial tasks and go to jazz shows in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

After a year of nonsense, which wasn't entirely a waste because I did some reading and writing, I was welcomed back to Kenyon as a junior in the Fall of 1986. I learned from Andrew Stein, an old friend and soon to become Kullmann's favorite student that he and others were studying w/ the professor. The second Monday of school I made a call to Prof. Kullmann's house ( I still hadn't chosen a department or an advisor.) "What would you like to study, sir?" the old gentleman asked me. "The Old Testament, professor," I answered. I was then corrected (about my little bible reading.) He informed me that the Hebrew scriptures (Hebrew Bible: pentateuch, wisdom, propehetic writings, apocrypha) were grafted onto the gospels and Christian letters and revelation for what the West called the bible (but he meant the Hebrew bible.) (In the Antichrist, which Kullmann did not mention, Nietzsche railed against the merging of the two as a great literary offense against the spirit. Blake, too, (also not discussed) said in the Marriage of Heaven and Hell that now everyone worships the Jewish God -- I think he had the prophet Ezekiel say it.)

So I brought my Oxford bible, down the hill in Gambier and the professor met me halfway. "Doctor Gary," he called me and shook my hand. I started taking notes at his house right away and he discouraged me "Let what sticks stick, " he said. "knowledge is what you have after all the notebooks have been burned!" The other thing that stuck with me that day was what the professor said "God is the silent answer to the last question."

Prof. Kullmann quickly determined that he liked me and that I had no religious upbring, so "nothing to unlearn," he said. He was pleased that I was taking Latin and Historical Thought and the Gospels but not pleased about my other religion selection. He told me many things that early, sunny September afternoon, one that I remember about the Iliad, (7th book.) Ajax taunts the Trojan Glaukos and The Trojan replies "Very like leaves are the generations of men." He said that was meant for Toynbee, Spengler and Valery but I never read any of these. (But later that year I read Homer with McCulloh and it suddenly made sense.)